


SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK

by cherryblur



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Blood and Gore, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 11:51:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18445985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryblur/pseuds/cherryblur
Summary: “I don’t want a friend,” He says.Josh doesn’t understand.





	SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK

**Author's Note:**

> i feel Josh is always the pining miserable friend  
> time to turn the tables 
> 
>  
> 
> based off the visuals of slow dancing in the dark by joji

Tyler’s out. Tyler’s so far fucking out he doesn’t know where he is or what’s even going on around him. 

He thinks he’s at the bus stop, telling from the fogged glass panels surrounding him and the cold metal seat below. Cigarette ashes fall onto his jeans and he doesn’t bother wiping them away.  
Condensation builds around him in delicate dewdrops. Smells like rain. 

His head is leaned back, eyes so blissed and glossy he can’t tell if it’s tears or light that fills his vision.  
Turns out it’s both.  
He cries in artificial light, and he doesn’t even know why. Wind blows kindly through the cracks underneath the glass panels. 

_Where is Josh?_ His brain asks timidly. 

Josh?  
Is that why he’s crying? 

His cigarette stings into his fingers because it’s burned to the end, stuck on the rose and Tyler just lets it fall.  
Josh is out, too. 

Josh is out with people, people who love him and touch him all over because he’s oh so _desireable_.  
Tyler breathes in a choppy fashion and feels his heart palpate in lovesick beats. 

He feels like he could pass out. Maybe he’s drunk, or high. He opens his mouth and tastes blood that drips down from his nose. He doesn’t bother wiping it away.

He wills himself to stand and stumbles on his unsteady feet. His mind spins and his body wobbles.  
All he can think about is Josh.  
Josh, who’s getting touched and kissed and probably not even thinking about where Tyler is right now. 

Tyler tugs on his unruly hair and wishes he could just cut it all off again.  
His hands grip the sides of the bus stop walls because he’s made it out into the open, where anyone deciding to walk around at 2 AM could stop and gawk at his frazzled demeanor. 

His hands shake and he rustles through his pockets to find another cigarette.  
The pure white paper filter gets stained red and Tyler hopes it doesn’t ruin the tobacco stuffed inside.  
His smoke glides through the air when he walks, feet shuffling along the sidewalk because he didn’t really want to die in a shitty old bus stop station.

He finds the wall of a passing building and uses that to hold himself up.  
More blood, it comes from everywhere, fills his gaze.  
His fingers bleed from their cracked, dry orfices. His nose still oozes down his face and he wipes it with the back of his hand, ultimately succeeding in smearing it across his cheek. 

He swallows thick and tastes only the acid of his own toxic love. 

_Tyler_ , his brain thumps with a raging migraine and scolds him for letting himself go again.  
He can’t help it. 

Thinking about Josh. 

He coughs and more red splatters into the crook of his elbow. Where is it all coming from? 

Possibly from the hole left in his miserable, desperate heart.  
He’s surely dressed for the occasion, and he laughs at his own joke. 

The white dress shirt he wears is buttoned up pristinely, ready for a night out.  
It now shrieks horror movie from the awful red stains bleeding through the fabric. 

It’s big, and growing. Right over his heart. 

A morbid Cupid, come to take what was rightfully his.  
It’s an arrow, shot by pure love. Digging into its target proudly. 

Tyler gasps, straightens his back and leans on his brick wall with his mouth hanging open.  
His eyes squeeze shut and all those tears he thought wouldn’t come out anymore find their way through the drying blood on his cheeks. 

His hands smack the wall in anger. Desperation, maybe? His heart beats so, so slow. 

It’s pierced, for sure. Open and gushing out all over his other organs.  
The arrowhead pokes through his ribs playfully.  
_Josh,_ he thinks wistfully.  
_How could I let this happen?_

He chokes, leans over and vomits blood and half of what looks like his chunky useless guts on the sidewalk. His dress shoes don’t look so shiny anymore. 

The cuffs of his shirt are so tight. They’re so tight on his poor wrists so he unbuttons the shirt and finds it’s stuck.  
Stuck on the arrow. 

There’s just a small prick, just a tiny wound on his chest.  
His back is such a different story. 

Josh is probably fucking someone right now, his brain reminds him in that friendly fashion while the warning alarms go off saying that _oh, I’m probably going to die._

Yes, that could be nice. 

All bright lights, dance floors and endless love forever. He could kiss Josh as much as he wanted.  
His knees start to buckle, so he keeps going. 

He sways, shoulders bunched forward because it hurts a little less if he tenses just right.  
He walks in a sickly dance, jerking and twitching in pain because the arrow in his back shifts with every step he takes.  
His back is a cherry red shade of a dress shirt. 

Tyler wants to dance with Josh.  
He wants to curve in dusty lights with hands holding him steady. He wants the face-to-face actions that tell him he’s cared for.  
He doesn’t want to dance in the dark.  
He wants to see the angel of his desires. 

He thinks of the flowers that could consume them both. Roses-maybe carnations-could fit around them so beautifully in a wreath.  
Tucked into their hair and woven into their wounds.  
Tyler would love to have pretty petals falling from his chest. 

He’d love to just lay, open and splayed out with blood and sickly sweet smells infiltrating his clogged nose no matter how hard he tries to hold his breath and die. 

He can almost hear the pounding bass of the music where Josh resides, all sex hair and sweaty hands as he comes down from a high. Tyler falls to his knees and gags on his own tongue. 

He spits, chokes and watches more and more blood ooze down in the form of drool.  
That’s not so bad.  
He stands himself back up, tripping over his bumbling feet like a newborn deer trying ever so hard to gain balance and explore this new world. 

Tyler is trying ever so hard to get out. 

He’s so close, he can almost see Josh’s car, really, he thinks, when his face hits the pavement.  
For a split second all he sees is that white dance floor Josh was on just a couple hours ago. 

His blood seeps through the buzzing lights and pools around him.  
He opens his mouth and all he tastes is the gushing red that frees itself from his body in any way it could.  
“I don’t want a friend,” He says to the bitter loneliness around him. He wants to stay on this dance floor forever. 

It flickers back and forth, between his heaven of a death and the cold pavement. He sputters out the saying again and his blood makes a stream from where his lips have moved.  
He’d wait. He’d wait forever for Josh.  
Maybe Josh will be the one to find him. 

He’s doing so great. 

_”I don’t want a friend,” He says, shaking with tears. “I want my life in two.”_

_Josh shakes his head with that expression that means he can do no wrong._  
_”I don’t understand, Tyler.”_

_I love you._

Tyler runs his fingers through his bodily paints and waits until someone notices he’s not at the party.

His eyes find a way to finally close.

**Author's Note:**

> yeah


End file.
